England May Play Elsewhere if NFL Plays at Wembley

It’s clear that expanding to England is the National Football League’s next step in terms of growing American football. The NFL started NFL Europe, which lasted 16 years from 1991 to 2007. In 2007, the NFL decided to drop the league format and focused on having a single game played at Wembley Stadium. The high demand of the game caused the NFL to expand to two games in 2013, three in 2014 and now are interested in expanding to doing an eight game season with a single team (likely with the Jacksonville Jaguars or a new team) or with different teams starting in 2017. The NFL and the FA have discussed the possibility of an eight game season being played at Wembley and essentially booting the England National Team out of Wembley during the Fall and will play in stadiums elsewhere in the country during that time.

This isn’t an entirely new concept in international soccer. The United States and many other countries play in different stadiums throughout their own respective country and do not have a designated national stadium. England even had to have games in other places when the new Wembley Stadium was being built but Wembley has traditionally been the national stadium of England.

The FA would only do this if they were getting paid a lot of money, and they are. The NFL is going to play more games which are sold out, something that the English National Team can’t do in some friendlies. In the end, I think this is a win-win for all parties and we won’t have to risk seeing American football lines while England plays a team like Poland in an international friendly. Just thinking about that kind of image may bring about the biblical Apocalypse.

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @phillipbupp

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